The problem with writing

Yes, you read that correctly... I said problem and writing in the same sentence. I know... writing if far from a problem, except of course when you have that paper due the next day, you are not interested in the topic and the last thing you want to do is write. (No, this is not the situation I am in this afternoon!)

Today though, writing is my problem. After spending the last week writing each evening my pattern changed and I spent time with my journal and scripture this morning. How is this a problem? Well, now *all* I want to do is write in my journal. I want to reflect and ponder, imagine and dream. I want to go back to my February 2011 entries and find out what I was writing about a year ago. What was on mind... what was happening in my life.

And I can't just sit and write all day, at least not today. Today I have to read some more of Milton's Paradise Lost and get a good head start on the paper that is due in the coming days. And yet, all I want to do is immerse myself in my writing... I just want to write.

New

Windowsill Candles 

I've always loved opening something for the first time... lighting a new candle, starting a new bottle of hand soap, smelling a new book, sleeping in a newly made bed, having dishes newly cleaned.

I love baking something new or even something familiar - it's the look of newly baked cookies cooling on the rack that I love so much. 

New, new, new. New life, new friendships, new challenges, new adventures, new questions, new answers. Newness can be exciting, very exciting. But the familiar - yep, that's often what I get drawn back to.  

Tonight though while surrounded by my familiar routine I greatly enjoyed lighting a new candle and struggled to keep myself from trying a new recipe. Some newness needs to be saved for another day! 

A clean house, glass of wine and triple chocolate chip cookies!

My reading break started today. This is the break where many take off to warm places or back to home to be with their families and find some time to rest. I started my break today with a 9am meeting with my professor so we could sort out my graduating essay details (let the research begin!) and then finished up a paper I needed to hand in. And that will continue to be the pattern of my reading break... I will actually be reading this time around. 

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

Don't worry... there will be some time for rest, kitting, napping, and the start of all things Lenten (I get to make Mardi Gras masks with children and the young at heart at our Shrove Tuesday Pancake supper this year!)... and yes, that will all be great and well deserved. Just don't let me get too caught up in it all that I forget about my studies... okay?

Tonight though, after the school work and catching up with my mom and brother... I cleaned my whole house! I've been wanting to clean, clean, clean for the last week and it feels completely wonderful to have it all done. What a great way to start the break. After all... a messy house begins to make a grumpy and stressed Melissa. 

TRU Campus during our recent snowfall

So, after all the cleaning was done I really wanted to bake with my almond flour that had arrived that afternoon. So I went to the store to purchase my missing ingredient and ended up also picking up a bottle of wine. The rest of my evening consisted of making Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies... as my first almond flour baking experiment I must say they are amazing! I'm going to have to freeze some so that I don't consume them all at once. And probably share some with friends so they can enjoy the small bit of heavenly like delight. 

So, an evening with a clean house, delicious chocolate goodness, a delicate glass of wine and some time catching up with a good friend via amazing technology means that I'm pretty content! 

Side note: we got another dump of snow yesterday... 12cm of unexpected beauty. Today it started melting... the world will soon be a bit sloppier! 

Sorrento Centre - Join us for Summer 2012

Bring your children and your grandchildren! Bring you and your amazing family and join us for a week of Summer Programming at Sorrento Centre this July! 

You can find our program guide on the website: www.sorrento-centre.bc.ca and view the video below to catch a glimpse of what a typical week of programming from the experience of children, youth, families and staff might be. 

Words heard for the first time...

Cousin Maggie's baptism in 2008

This Sunday at church we had a baptism. The welcoming of a wee baby girl into God's family forever. It was powerful, it was amazing, it was a baptism.

Now, I've been to a number of baptisms... many for little babies, some for adults and my own in grade three. And yet yesterday I heard words in the baptism service that I've never heard before. These words were spoken in the prayer after this little baby was baptized and signed with the cross. These words were: "Give her an inquiring and discerning heart" and the prayer continued with: "the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen."


It always amazes me how I can hear words over and over and over again and then one day really hear them. Almost like I have never encountered the words before. Like my ears, my brain and my heart heard them for the first time.


Give her an inquiring and discerning heart


These are the words that will stay with me, these are the words that I heard yesterday, these are the words that have so much power, hope and emotion.

Maybe I heard them yesterday because I find myself inquiring and discerning so much right now (not that I haven't before!). It's become part of my week, day, hour, minute. Discerning God's call and what my heart is yearning for... both these things together. Listening for the wisdom within myself and from others around me. Changing my mind over and over again. Questioning everything and then having moments where I can see my passions and my call come to life.

And maybe it's also that fact that I realized during the service as those words were spoken and the tears begin to fill my eyelids that someone once prayed those exact words over me... for me... Maybe it's the realization that these words have been part of my life for more years then I've realized. That this has been part of me and who I am and what I'm doing. That years ago it was prayed for me the great hope that I may have an inquiring and discerning heart.

The words prayed over this infant child are the same words that were once prayed over me.
Words that have been spoken for years and yet only just heard.

Holy One, we thank you that by this water and the Holy Spirit you 
have bestowed upon this your servant the forgiveness of sin, and 
have raised her to the new life of grace. Sustain her O Lord, in 
your Holy Spirit. Give her an inquiring and discerning heart, the 
courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, 
and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.



Prayer from The Book of Alternative Services of The Anglican Church of Canada page 160.

Jack Frost comes again!

I was stunned by the beauty of the frost covered campus when I went to school yesterday morning and was saddened that I didn't have my camera to capture the delegate frost covering. But this morning Jack Frost and come again and left his gentle marks all over the earth... or at least all over campus! Absolutely beautiful.

The desert place... the place of solitude

In Jan L. Richardson's book: IN THE SANCTUARY OF WOMEN (a book I commend to you all for reading) she writes:

DRY

     And the well runs dry. It's one of the most common experiences in the spiritual life. A practice that we have cherished, a habit that has deepened us and drawn us closer to God, a discipline that we perhaps have engaged in for years no longer seems to work. Gradually over time or overnight with no warning, its familiar contours turn foreign, dull, perhaps even painful. 

     These times call us to some of our deepest discernment. They dare us to ask, Am I being called to go deeper in the practice, to persist, to keep digging toward the wellspring that surely must be here somewhere? Am I being invited to wait and listen? Or is God leading me toward a different practice than the one I have known?

     This kind of discernment, of course, is its own practice. Pondering the questions that lie at the bottom of a dry well offers a journey of its own. What I know is this: to find the answers, we have to pay attention to the dryness. This is a desert place. As uncomfortable as it may be, there is no substitute for these desert places in the spiritual life. They offer a wisdom that we cannot get any other way. 

I was reminded this week in Bible Study and this morning at church during the sermon how important spending time in the desert place, in the place of solitude and of prayer is. It's a reminder I often need to hear, one I strive to never forget but one that often gets forgotten. It's the permission to stop and feed my spiritual desires when the rest of the world has expanded my to do list or the demands of academic life have me struggling for breath underneath piles of paper. It's the message telling me that taking the time to go off by myself and pray will not only serve me but in return will serve the work, ministry and relationships I am engaged in. It's the quiet place, the pause place, the place of solitude and the place of direction. 

Jesus reminds us to enter into that place. Jesus models for us the importance in taking time in that place where we connect with God. In Mark 1:35-38 after a full day of teaching in the Synagogue and healing everyone who came to him we read: 

"While it was still night, way before dawn, he got up and went out to a secluded spot and prayed. Simon and those with him went looking for him. They found him and said, "Everybody's looking for you." Jesus said, "Let's go to the rest of the villages so I can preach there also. This is why I've come."

After hours and hours of healing Jesus was re-grounded in the direction of why he is here, what he has been called to do. 

This week, don't forget to enter into the desert place. The place of solitude and of prayer. And maybe there, in that place of "pause" you will be re-energized with the knowing of what it is you've been called here to do.